Posts from the “Art” Category

Samuel Fosso: Self-Portraits

Posted on October 18, 2017

Photo: Samuel Fosso 70s series, by Samuel Fosso, c. 1976/1977. © Samuel Fosso, Courtesy JM Patras/ Paris.

Photo: Samuel Fosso 70s series, by Samuel Fosso, c. 1976/1977. © Samuel Fosso, Courtesy JM Patras/ Paris.

At the tender age of 13, Samuel Fosso set up Studio Photo Nationale, and began his career as a photographer. The year was 1975, and Fosso was working in the city of Bangui, located just inside the border of Central African Republic.

“With Studio National, you will be beautiful, stylish, dainty and easy to recognize,” Fosso promised. Here he works taking passport, portrait, and wedding photographs for the community—but it was his self-portraits that brought the artist global acclaim.

“I started taking self-portraits simply to use up spare film; people wanted their photographs the next day, even if the roll wasn’t finished, and I didn’t like waste. The idea was to send some pictures to my mother in Nigeria, to show her I was all right.,” Fosso told The Guardian in 2011. “Then I saw the possibilities. I started trying different costumes, poses, backdrops. It began as a way of seeing myself grow up, and slowly it became a personal history – as well as art, I suppose.”

And from this seed of genius, a life’s work arose, one that is rooted in the complexity of layering, meaning, and identity inherent to the self, and just how plastic these things are when we skate along the surface of life, mistaking appearances for the thing they claim to represent.

Like a great actor, Fosso delves deep within himself and returns with an understanding of human nature and the way it manifests in the body, and on the face, through costume, gesture, and expression. For the past forty years, Fosso has honed his craft, creating a body of work that examines the experience of life as a West African man.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Photo: Samuel Fosso 70s series, by Samuel Fosso, c. 1976/1977. © Samuel Fosso, Courtesy JM Patras/ Paris.

Photo: Samuel Fosso 70s series, by Samuel Fosso, c. 1976/1977. © Samuel Fosso, Courtesy JM Patras/ Paris.

Categories: 1970s, Africa, Art, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Photography

Robin F. Williams: Your Good Taste Is Showing

Posted on October 18, 2017

Robin Williams. Your Good Taste is Showing. Acrylic, airbrush, and oil on canvas 72 x 72 inches. Copyright Robin Williams, Courtesy P.P.O.W

We live at a time of extreme disconnects between the representations and reality, fueling a compulsive cycle of consumption in search of illusions and false ideals. Nowhere can this be seen better than in advertisements, which are designed to provoke a complex mixture of desire and dissatisfaction. What makes them eerily effective is the way they integrate into our lives, informing our attitudes, opinions, and aesthetics. As time passes they become something more: memories of the “good ol’ days,” which we can wax nostalgic upon while simultaneously rewriting our histories to flatter our self-images.

The subject of gender is infinitely complex, with its ideals and archetypes that are far more constructions of fantasies and fears than they are upon the mundane reality that makes them infinitely more messy, revealing the inherent nature of paradox at the root of existence when we live in a state of conflict rather than harmony with our lives.

Advertisements are false paradigms that are readily absorbed for their reductive thinking that enables people who like to avoid responsibility to readily allow someone else to dictate the terms. Naturally, they are far more seductive otherwise they wouldn’t work. By provoking us with pragmatic solutions (buy this! use that!) they cultivate dependency not only on their wares but also on the very medium itself. Perhaps there’s nothing so delicious as a reflection upon which we can project our ego’s demanding neediness. Invariably, short term gratification wears off, and we return to the well even thirstier than we were when we first took a sip.

Robin Williams. It is Not a Pipe. Acrylic and oil on panel 30 x 30 inches. Copyright Robin Williams, Courtesy P.P.O.W

The construction of the female gender is American society has long been a losing paradigm, dating back to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s idealistic essay Woman (1885), which overwhelms with the weight of virtue and vulnerability. “They are victims of the finer temperament,” he writes, clearly enamored with the pedestal upon which he places them.

Fast forward nearly a century to the 1970s, as liberation movements began to free women from these tiresome constraints. The pendulum, being what it is, swung in the other direction, where wanton grace became the idea. Advertisers understood the power of aping the zeitgeist, corralling the chaotic displays of self-exploration into neatly packaged archetypes.

These aesthetics fascinated American artist Robin F. Williams and became an integral motif throughout her new body of work, which combined genre painting and portraiture to subversive effect in the new exhibition Your Good Taste Is Showing, now on view at P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York, through November 11, 2017.

Williams’ work deftly mixes takes 1970s advertisements as its departure point, examining the ways in which they drew upon art historical tropes to sell everything from cigarettes to shampoo. Where the advertisements wanted to draw you in to their world, Williams’ forces you to back off, subverts expectations of propriety, giving her subjects the agency to figuratively flip the bird while still looking, soft, sensual, and glamorous. Here, sexy is a double-edged sword, for it both makes you look but places a clear boundary between the desire it stimulates and its ability to fulfill your dreams.

No, the works says, not this time. I’m not yours.

Robin Williams. Bather, 2017. Acrylic, airbrush, and oil on canvas, 38 x 23 inches. Copyright Robin Williams, Courtesy P.P.O.W.

Categories: Art, Exhibitions

Joe Mama-Nitzberg: Picture not Portrait

Posted on October 16, 2017

Our Grandmothers, 2017. Pigment print on canvas, 36 x 24 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Grant Wahlquist Gallery.

“Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation—not judgment. Camp is generous,” Susan Sontag wrote in her seminal 1964 essay Notes on “Camp.”

It is here that we begin—and return—in the work of Joe Mama-Nitzberg’s new exhibition, Picture, not Portrait, currently on view at Grant Wahlquist Gallery, Portland, ME, through November 11, 2017. The exhibition presents a selection of recent works that open questions and create space for dialogue about the interplay between technology, memory, identity, and the curious legacy of postmodernism.

Mama-Nitzberg is generous in his approach, simultaneously exploring and critiquing the complex ideas that most would prefer to put into reductive, didactic boxes of thought. Here, nothing is quite what it seems but all the better for us, as it opens up spaces for interrogation that are more often than not silenced.

The works in the exhibition peel back the layers of perception to expose the complications of reality, of the simultaneous spaces that are at one contradictory and complementary. Here, we are liberated from the authority of the absolute, free to experience the work in whatever way we wish. Mama-Nitzberg offers insight into his process, allowing us to see the ways in which are can be a vehicle for debate, discussion, and contemplation.

Could you speak about the legacy of postmodernism: what do you think this entails, both for better and for worse? How does your work speak to this legacy?

Joe Mama-Nitzberg: The strategies of postmodernism are still reverberating and utilized even when they are not identified as such, including questions of authorship, power relations, pastiche, appropriation, image/text, high/ low.

Postmodernism created an awareness and an embracing of an unfixed state. It is creating terror when employed by our president. The post-truth, post-facts playbook can have us scrambling towards the safety of essentialism. As comforting as this may seem, we cannot un-ring that bell.

Untitled (Elite Detachment Sontag), 2017. Pigment print on canvas. 36 x 24 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Grant Wahlquist Gallery.

You use Susan Sontag’s seminal 1964 essay Notes on “Camp” as a jumping off point for several pieces in the exhibition, with particular attention to “[d]etachment is the prerogative of an elite.” How do you address her academic detachment in her work?

Joe Mama-Nitzberg: The statement “detachment is the prerogative of an elite” jumped out at me. I was touched to think she was crowning “camp” queens as “the elite,” even if this might be taken as a critique. Although she was a part of the gay/queer community and did participate in “the life,” Sontag was an academic writing about a gay male subculture.

One could say that her academic status detached her from this bar/street culture. One could also say that her gender detached her from this group. Perhaps there is some truth to this but perhaps it is exactly this distance and detachment that made it possible for her to theorize in the manner that she did. She was inside and outside simultaneously.

When I began making these pieces, there was a Sontag moment happening in the culture. This was also the zenith of what has been popularly referred to as “Zombie Formalism” [a term coined by Walter Robinson referring to the resurrection of the aesthetics of Clement Greenberg]. I realized that many of the paintings that were qualifying as “Zombie Formalism”, for me also qualified as “Camp”.

I was very interested in playing with just who the “elite” might be to the viewer. Artists? The 1%? Traditional gay male culture? Academia? Me?

Untitled (Henri Matisse by Carl Van Vechten 1), 2017. Framed archival pigment print, 23.875 x 19.625 inches (framed). Courtesy of the artist and Grant Wahlquist Gallery.

How do your reconceptualizations of Carl Van Vechten’s portraits address power relations, cultural appropriation, and the limits of the digital?

Joe Mama-Nitzberg: A friend gave me a biography of Carl Van Vechten as a gift. I had a very visceral response to the book. Both his life story and his photography produced true ambivalence for me. I found his dedication to promoting other artists to be generous as well as exploitative and self-aggrandizing. As a well-connected wealthy white man, he had the ability to introduce artists and artworks to the literati and the glitterati. Many of those that Van Vechten promoted were African American. I felt that Van Vechten truly wanted to bring about racial understanding and harmony and that he had tremendous respect for Black people. That said, I also felt he was a controlling diva who did not have to navigate life in the same way as many of those that he championed.

And here it gets even more complicated. Van Vechten was a gay man during the many decades of the twentieth century when that was hardly a privileged distinction to hold. It was often a crime. Van Vechten was working to champion other marginalized peoples in a way to elevate his own status. Does that now make my use of his work righteous, as I identify as a gay/queer man, and hence it is also makes it my own marginalized culture to appropriate and represent?

I say this with the awareness that I am looking at all of this through a twenty-first century lens. I take these questions of cultural appropriation and power relations very seriously. I need to examine my own position in the work as one that is questioning rather than answering. I have tried to create an open arena rather than a place where to make absolute proclamations of ownership.

As for the limits of the digital, I utilize Adobe Photoshop to make these images. I am self-taught in Photoshop and let’s just say I would never brag about my skills. One of my interests is what I am calling “the digital hand.” These consumer-based programs and algorithms have empowered me to make work in a way that was never available to me before. I have a confidence to work on my own with a level of freedom that I lacked as a younger artist who relied on others and their technical expertise.

The Van Vechten pieces in the show all have similar formal qualities. These similarities are created by the source Van Vechten images, as well as by how I make marks in Photoshop and the limits of the program. Photoshop is designed to be consistent and to jump through the same hoops over and over. That’s what Adobe is selling.

Untitled (Henri Matisse by Carl Van Vechten 2), 2017. Framed archival pigment print, 22 x 18 inches (framed). Courtesy of the artist and Grant Wahlquist Gallery.

It’s always very telling when the work of rebellion becomes the very thing it set out against, in this case the work of the Pictures generation. Could you speak about the ideological failure of appropriation?

Joe Mama-Nitzberg: The exhibition is titled Picture not Portrait because I liked the many ways this could reverberate and how it might be read. The title came from a piece with a quote from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. I caught myself making the mistake of calling it The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Somehow to me it just sounded grand and correct. But… It is incorrect and I wanted to make sure I was using the correct title.

To remember, I created the mantra “Picture not Portrait” and I loved the ring this had. As I use photographs of individuals and refer to their biographies, I was also thinking about both pictures and portraits. How do these terms operate for the viewer?

Lastly, I use “Picture” to refer to the Pictures Generation/Group. I don’t believe that this work or these artists necessarily failed or that if they did that their failure was truly different than any other artistic radical gesture’s failure: they all seem to fail in the same way. We like to think that we can be outside of capitalism, and that critique, even if is commodified, is still somehow rebellious.

This is nothing new. Wilde’s rebellion was always a cash cow. The subversion in his talks, books and plays made him a very wealthy man – that is, until his homosexuality sent him to prison.

We often choose to be naïve and self-serving. We are stuck in a system that does not allow us to escape this double bind. Making work that is purely formal and avoids these strategies doesn’t work. Not making objects/commodities but accepting monies from institutions and collectors doesn’t really work either. With all of this said, today I will not choose cynicism and defeat. I am still deeply optimistic about the power of art to be radical and to communicate and affect change.

Noble Sissy 1, 2017. Pigment print on fabric, 37 x 26 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Grant Wahlquist Gallery.

Categories: Art, Exhibitions

Pieter Hugo: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Posted on October 15, 2017

Emeka, motorcyclist and Abdullahi Ahmadu Asaba, Nigeria, from the series “The Hyena & Other Men”, 2005-2007, 2007. © Pieter Hugo / Stevenson gallery, Cape Town/Johannesburg

Imagine coming of age as a white man in South Africa during Apartheid. How does the truth of your people weigh on you: does it turn you into an accomplice or does it push you into the margins of resistance? It’s a question worthy of consideration outside the frame of SA – it speaks to the nature of existence: do you stand for or against oppression?

South African photographer Pieter Hugo took to the camera to address his questions and concerns, using the medium as a means to examine, document, and subvert, creating several bodies of work that are deeply layered and resonant, charged with strength, emotion, and defiance.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg/Prestel) beautifully presents Hugo’s most important series made over the past two decades. Here we see how Hugo inherently understood his position as a white man in South Africa and the legacy it entailed, neither shirking from, diminishing, or rationalizing the horrors of his people. Instead he took his inheritance as the opportunity to set the record straight, to stand as an outsider and from this vantage point, use the camera to speak truth to power.

Of the first series, Looking Aside, made in South African between 2003 and 2006, Hugo writes, “In this early body of work I explicitly took a confrontational stance, an attitude that is rehearsed in a lot of my subsequent work. It is an unflinching series. I wanted the intensity of my own gaze.”

That gaze was informed by two trajectories: the falsehoods of photojournalism as informed by American ideologies steeped in superficial humanism and the use of photography by the South African government as a means to control apartheid through a system of classification and separation. With these currents flowing through his mind, Hugo pointed his camera straight on, creating a series of portraits that defy romanticism, intended to discomfit and disconcert with their lack of heroicism, beauty, or pretense.

This direct approach makes use of the camera as a tool of aggression, for it forces us to look, to see, to recognize a picture of humanity that has been whitewashed, distorted, or completely denied. Whether photographing the vestiges of the Rwandan Genocide in 2004 or The Hyena & Other Men in Nigeria in 2005-2007, Hugo’s photographs are challenging and confrontational, yet courageous.

Hugo’s willingness to upend tradition was transformative. Where The Hyena & Other Men was shocking when it was first released, it has now become embedded into the fabric of fine art photography. And this is where things begin to shift, as Hugo’s work blurs the boundaries between documentary, portraiture, and fine art to create a new kind of environmental portraiture.

Obechukwu Nwoye, Enugu, Nigeria, from the series “Nollywood”, 2008-2009, 2008. © Pieter Hugo / Stevenson gallery, Cape Town/Johannesburg

Green Point Common, Cape Town, from the series “Kin”, 2006-2013, 2007. © Pieter Hugo / Stevenson gallery, Cape Town/Johannesburg

From the Wild Honey Collectors, shot in Ghana in 2005, to Nollywood, made in Nigeria in 2008-2009, we see the emergence of a new aspect to Hugo’s work. “In my development as an artist,” Hugo writes of Nollywood, “this project was the first time I really questioned the veracity of the portrait. I became aware of how one can play with portraiture, this it can be much more than just the superficial depiction of a subject.”

And so, by the time he was making Kin in South Africa between 2006-2013, and Permanent Error in Ghana in 2009-2010, everything had changed. Hugo’s portraits had entered into a new realm, one that was just as direct but less antagonistic. They were subtle and complex yet at times eerie and apocalyptic. Their humanism was neither sentimental nor idealistic; instead they captured the disturbing fact that reality is deeply unnerving.

Rooted in truth, we simply look and we observe, but it is how we react — and what we do with that reaction, that speaks of and for our character. Since seeing Hugo’s photographs made for Permanent Error, published by Prestel in 2011, I felt a shift: a purpose and a calling in my writing about photography and art.

His photographs are made inside a circle of hell. The Agbogbloshie dump, located on the outskirts of Ghana’s capital, Accra, is a wetland turned wasteland, a slum and a workplace populated by thousands of men and boys who refer to this area as Sodom and Gomorrah. This is a slum of the twenty-first century, a place that Western countries would never allow within their borders, a place that could only exist among disenfranchised—in the rice fields of Guiya, China; behind the electronics markets of Lagos, Nigeria; in the back alleys of Karachi, Delhi, and Hanoi. It is the place where pits are dug and fires burn, and in those fires, our Information Age truly leaves its mark.

The United Nations Environment Program estimates that we now produce 50 million metric tons of e-waste per year, and 6,500 tons will arrive each month at the Port of Tema, where it then finds its way on to Agbogbloshie. The workers in these poisoned pits make their living first by hauling then smashing, gutting, and burning the televisions and computers to recover copper, steel, and aluminum. The only thing green in this equation is the money being made by electronics manufacturers, whose sales are booming—despite the recession—for computer games, printers, electronic toys, MP3 players, digital cameras, GPS devices, camcorders, tablet readers, computers, and televisions.

In 2001, when the book was released, United States, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Japan, and South Korea refuse to honor the Basel Ban Agreement, which was created in 1995 to ban the export of all forms of hazardous wastes for any reason. Of these countries, only the US refused to ratify the original 1989 United Nations treaty known as the Basel Convention, which created a full an on the export of toxic wastes for any reason from developed to developing countries.

The result of this failure is the creation of places like Agbogbloshie, where the unrelenting waves of the Information Age crash upon the shores like tidal waves. Pieter Hugo’s photographs show us the price of progress, an unquantifiable desecration of the earth and its inhabitants. This kind of inhumanity reaches a level on unconscionable ignorance that Hugo’s photographs brutally address. Baring witness to a new kind of inferno that is in its nascent stage, Hugo’s photographs stand as a testament against our complacent assumptions. “Recycling” is the chipper chatter of marketers leading the masquerade.

Permanent Error stands in dark warning and reveal the reality of our brutally consumerist lifestyle. We share this responsibility, just as we share this earth. You and me, your friends and family, all of us are the reason Agbogbloshie exists. I’ve never gotten over this and it challenges me to come to terms with not only my work as a writer but as someone complicit in the destruction of the planet.

Hugo reminds me that reality exists beyond our experience of it, and at the same time it is our responsibility to come to terms with our inheritance. To avoid and ignore, to rationalize, to pretend or play dumb is nothing more than a lie. On the path to solutions, we must first speak the truth, to ask the disturbing questions, and come to terms with our guilt. Too many get caught up in shame and blame, in a disingenuous paradigm that asserts itself to avoid responsibility.

That we don’t have the answers is rational. How could we when we can barely speak or acknowledge the truth? Hugo reminds us, the first step towards salvation is owning up, baring the burden, and transforming it through the action of redemption and salvation in the name of humanity.

Thoba Calvin and Tshepo Cameron Sithole- Modisane, Pretoria, from the series “Kin”, 2006- 2013, 2013. © Pieter Hugo / Stevenson gallery, Cape Town/Johannesburg

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Photography

A Trip to Alcatraz

Posted on October 12, 2017

It wasn’t dark when we set out on water. It had been bright and clear light. June maybe? I’m not really sure. The middle of every decade blurs into this wave, a maze, like a web of memories intricate and imprecise though the vibe is magnified through the lens of time. So I’m on this boat, a motor boat, it has two tiers. I’m on the water, indoors and out. Dramamine I am sure, that’s the only drug besides Advil I’ve had in years.

Good thing too cause I’m real sensitive. To heights. Depths. Shifting balances. I’m not a natural. I’m the opposite. But at least I’m predictable (indeed). So here we are on the seas of Marin County and we are cruising into San Francisco Bay. It’s beautiful, everything is shades of blue, the water ripples fan out and flow into waves that coast under the skies that darken as the horizon looms. Out to ocean it’s the sunset but inland it’s electric lights dotting the landscape.

I love the way SF looks as you move towards it. The tall hills jutting out on that little mass of insistent land. Beautifully sculpted with old buildings of sorbet and marshmallow. Towards the water, tiny two stories cottages line up like Peeps at Duane Reade in April… and me not eating sugar so I see it everywhere.

I’m on the boat. Dancing with Jim. He’s playing DJ and I’m not sure what he’s spinning but it’s goood. Cause that Dram is working so the floor tilting isn’t a bad thing. I need this. Deeply. Inside me. Letting loose on the high seas, so to speak. Set me free ~

Then the captain calls me, so I step to the stern and there I am, by his side, looking out the front, moving with purpose across the top and it all feels different now, as though the power of the sea was beneath my feet and I relax into the energies that floated and swirled through the air.

We are coming upon Alcatraz. The sky was dark and stars sparkled in the canopy. I look at the island and from the fog of a dream a ferry emerged. I knew it wasn’t actually there, I could see it, through but not with my eyes. I looked it over and noticed two men in suits, hats, and trenchcoats. Very 1930s. Feds. I watched the boat dock and they were off, into the noir.

I snapped back. It was 2005. 2006. 2007. (ahem). Not sure. Those years are a blur. But I’m sure I am where I standing. Beside the captain. He might have been saying something. Didn’t matter, really…

Categories: Art

Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco

Posted on October 12, 2017

Photo: Antonio Lopez, Pat Cleveland, Paris (Blue Water Series), 1975. Copyright, 2012, The Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos. From Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco, a film by James Crump.

Photo: Antonio Lopez, Corey Tippin and Donna Jordan, Saint-Tropez, 1970. Photograph by Juan Ramos. © Copyright The Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos, 2012. From Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco, a film by James Crump.

Deep in the mountains of Puerto Rico lies Utuado, built by Spanish imperialists nearly 300 years ago. It is here that Antonio Lopez (1943–1987) was born. The son of a father who crafted mannequins and a mother who made dresses, Lopez was a child prodigy who began to sketch at the age of two, revealing a gift that would revolutionise the fashion industry and prefigure the times in which we currently live.

At the age of seven, Lopez and his family moved to New York City, where he grew up living a double life, making mannequins with his father but playing with dolls out of sight. His burgeoning bisexuality would soon drive a wedge between Lopez and his family, inspiring him to create his own centered in his artist studio at Carnegie Hall.

As the civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights movements made space for those who had been previously marginalized by the mainstream, Lopez and his creative partner Juan Ramos (1942–1995) introduced goddess-like visions of his muses to the world in the pages of Vogue, WWD, and The New York Times. His discoveries, known as “Antonio’s Girls” included Grace Jones, Pat Cleveland, Cathee Dahmen, Tina Chow, Jessica Lange, Jerry Hall and Warhol Superstars Donna Jordan, Jane Forth and Patti D’Arbanville – women who not merely beautiful but were extraordinary characters and artists in their own right.

In celebration of his glorious career, Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco, a film by James Crump, will make its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on October 12. The documentary charts Lopez’s rise from the streets of the Bronx to the pinnacle of the Parisian demimonde. As the dominant fashion illustrator of the late 1960s and 70s, Lopez arrived on the scene just as ready-to-wear came into existence, bringing his distinctive Afro-Latinx sensibilities into the mix.

Antonio Lopez 1970 brings us back to a pivotal period in fashion history when the aristocratic hierarchy of the couture houses was falling away. In its place, Lopez emerged with a vision so modern that he was boldly ahead of his time – James Crump reflects on the ways in which Lopez’s Afro-Latinx roots transformed the fashion industry.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: Eija Vehka Ajo, Juan Ramos, Jacques de Bascher, Karl Lagerfeld and Antonio Lopez, Paris, 1973. From Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco, a film by James Crump.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Dazed, Fashion, Manhattan, Photography

Joshua Lutz: Hesitating Beauty

Posted on October 10, 2017

To speak openly of mental illness is one of the last great taboos. Not to speak of treatment, of therapies, of medication, doctors, hospitals—not to speak of the industry that has been in existence for but a century, but to speak of the people themselves. Of their inner and outer lives, and the way in which these boundaries melt, of the way in which their illness subverts our understanding of what both reality and relationship mean. It takes an unfathomable courage to wade into the murky waters of the mind, into places that have been wounded and have become maladapted over time, into places few dare to tread for fear of losing themselves in the quagmire that goes beyond the rational mode of interpretation.

What few may understand is that mental illness is a shared state, affecting not only the person it befalls but those who walk in its wake. To stand before this illness and experience it in the flesh is to know a side to the sublime that few can truly grasp, a kind of shadow being that has cast its hand upon the earth. Many who live with it, or live in its presence have become silenced by its reach, fearing not only external judgment but the implications of sharing in its path. So much is unknown, untold, misunderstood, misdiagnosed. So much is dehumanized by fear, by shame, and by the system itself. It is for this reason that we are blessed to have artists like Joshua Lutz who bring profound and painful truths to us in the form of art so that we as a people may both meditate on and mediate the space where few dare to share with the world.

Hesitating Beauty, which runs April 11–May 18 at ClampArt, NY, is a study of Lutz’s experiences living with a mother suffering from schizophrenia. The nature of schizophrenia itself is not fully understood, but it is a detachment for our commonly-held perceptions of reality that drive the sufferer into a kind of psychosis few can comprehend on its own terms.

Blending family archives, interviews, and letters with Lutz’s photographs, “Hesitating Beauty” mirrors the disassociative and distorted qualities of the illness itself. What we accept as “reality” has been defined by the group, and anyone with even the slightest twinge of mental illness is aware of how slippery the slope is once we step away from the shared perception of “truth.” It is to Lutz’s credit that he lyrically conveys this dance with reality as it he experienced it firsthand. It comes back to photography, as it was the camera that he used to cope with the situation in which he lived.

Lutz reveals, “Are you ready for some true contradictions? Here is the thing: my relationship to photography keeps on changing. How it functions in my life and the role it plays continues to evolve even with the same subjects. As far as ‘Hesitating Beauty’ goes and the work involved in making it, there were times when I would photograph to simply put myself on the other side of the camera. To look at my mom, the crazy behavior I was seeing and to document it in some fashion probably prove to myself that I was not crazy. As long as the crazy was on the other side of the camera surely I couldn’t be loosing my mind.

“For so many years I thought I would get this illness. That I would grow up to have schizophrenia and need the medication and shock therapies that my mom was having. The camera and all that comes with it was this tool that functioned as a way to separate myself from the experience. In some respect it also just simply creating a task for me to do. Often I would dread the monotony of having to be a primary care giver. So for me it was this thing that I could do to pass the time. That sounds so horrible. ‘Spend time with you mom, you don’t need a camera,’ the little voice says.

“Well, that eventually did happen and as my relationship to photography changed. I did end up using it to look more closely. At some point I started to think about photography as a means to look at the world with a heightened sense of awareness. With that shift I was able to photograph in such a way that it wasn’t about passing the time or separating myself from the moment. For me it became more about being present to the situation regardless of how bad the situation was. To feel comfort in the love I had for my mom without wanting or grasping for some alternative outcome.”

It is here that we enter into Lutz’s world, a world where things are not as they seem, but love is that which holds us together through the stormy days. It is this understanding, compassion, and kindness that makes “Hesitating Beauty” so powerful. For as much as we consider the photographs as works of art, we must also consider them a private history made public in a way that challenges our assumptions about mental illness. Here Lutz asks that do not require answers so much as they offer the possibility of a new understanding that liberates all those who sufferer from the stigma imposed by the outside world.

First published in L’Oeil de la Photographie
November 12, 2014

All photos © Joshua Lutz

Categories: Art

Jonas Mekas: A Dance with Fred Astaire

Posted on October 4, 2017

Jonas MekasPhotography John Lennon. Photo courtesy of Anthology Editions

At 94-years-old, Jonas Mekas is undergoing a literary renaissance. The esteemed filmmaker, poet, and artist is publishing five books of work, most notably A Dance with Fred Astaire (Anthology Editions), a visual autobiography comprised of anecdotes and drawn from Mekas’ life after his arrival in New York in 1949.

Born in Lithuania in 1922, Mekas was a teen when the Russian Army invaded his homeland. As he and his brother, Adolfas, attempted to flee in 1944, they were captured and forced to spend eight months in Elmshorn, a Nazi labour camp. When the war ended, they became Displaced Persons living in refugee camps, until finally able to emigrate to America, settling in Brooklyn.

Once in town, Mekas planted new roots, from which the tree of life has grown firm, with many branches bearing countless fruits. At his deepest core, is a love for cinema, its revolutionary forms, and a profound respect for the avant-garde. Together with his brother, Mekas launched Film Culture magazine, which ran from 1954 to 1996. His commitment to community went far and wide, enabling him to serve a need and fill a void.

Mekas became the first film critic for the Village Voice, founded the Film-Makers’ Cooperative and the Film-Makers’ Cinematheque, which has since evolved into Anthology Film Archives, located in the heart of the East Village. Along the way, he met and collaborated with some of the greatest figures of the times, from Andy Warhol to Salvador Dalí, John Lennon to Jacqueline Onassis.

As you weave your way through his work, the words of Plato reveal themselves time and again: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” His is a singular life unlike any other, one filled with passion, determination, and innovation. His stories inspire, enlighten, and entertain with equal parts charm, courage, and originality. Mekas takes us on a stroll down memory lane, sharing the knowledge and wisdom garnered from a lifetime dedicated to art.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: Courtesy of Anthology Editions

Photo: Courtesy of Anthology Editions

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Dazed, Manhattan

Jane Friedman: How to Find Artists That Can Change the World

Posted on October 3, 2017

Photo: Mark Sink, Grace Jones, ca 1988

Artwork: Arturo Vega, “Supermarket Sign(Steak Sale)”, 1973. Acrylic on canvas 48 x 72 x 1 1/2 inches

Located in the heart of New York’s East Village, Howl! Happening was established in memory of artist Arturo Vega, who designed the iconic Ramones logo. Vega, a Mexican national, fled his native land in 1968 when the government rounded up 148 of the country’s most notable artists and intellectuals, putting their lives at risk. Vega fled to New York where he had prominent connections, like Jane Friedman – the woman made rock’n’roll journalism a legitimate business.

New York native Jane Friedman grew up on Broadway, as her father handled public relations for legendary shows along the Great White Way. Friedman followed in her father’s footsteps, and along the way, she realised her talents would be best served by supporting the greatest artists of the time. She went on to craft a new lane in the media, representing artists like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa, as well as doing PR for the famed musical Hair. She was also Patti Smith’s manager throughout her career.

Friedman has been a behind-the-scenes fixture in downtown New York, working with artists and musicians to ensure their success and legacy. When Vega, one of her dearest friends died in 2013, Friedman set up Howl! Arts, a non-profit organisation that preserves the culture of the East Village and the Lower East Side in a rapidly gentrifying city that has effectively erased so much of the New York’s fabled past.

Taking its name from Allen Ginsberg’s famed 1955 poem, Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project is the cornerstone of the organisation. A gallery, performance space, and archive located around the corner from where CBGBs once stood, Howl! Happening has been home to a series of phenomenal shows including exhibitions by Patricia Field, Lydia Lunch, Taboo!, PUNK Magazine’s 40th Anniversary, and The East Village Eye – as well as on-going events and performances that showcase the very best of the community, which continues to thrive despite the exponential explosion in the cost of living.

This month, Howl! presents Love Among the Ruins: 56 Bleecker Gallery Street and the late 80s New York, a group exhibition that looks back at the famed East Village gallery and performance space that served as a vital intersection of music, fashion, art, and nightlife during one of the most vital and devastating period of New York history. Featuring works by nearly 100 artists including David LaChapelle, Nan Goldin, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dondi White, Stephen Sprouse, and George Condo, to name just a few, the exhibition is on view through October 7, 2017.

Friedman speaks with us about what it takes to cultivate a community of artists that can change the world, while staying true to your roots, and shares images from the ongoing show.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Straight to Hell flyer

Photo: Mark Sink, Keith Haring, ca 1988

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Dazed, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Music, Painting, Photography, Women

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985

Posted on September 28, 2017

Photo: Sandra Eleta (Panamanian, b. 1942), Edita (la del plumero), Panamá (Edita (the one with the duster), Panama), 1978-1979. Black and white photograph. 30 × 30 in. (76.2 × 76.2 cm)Courtesy of the artist. Artwork © the artist

“I don’t give a shit what the world thinks. I was born a bitch, I was born a painter, I was born fucked. But I was happy in my way. You did not understand what I am. I am love. I am pleasure, I am essence, I am an idiot, I am an alcoholic, I am tenacious. I am; simply I am,” Frida Kahlo wrote in a letter to her husband, artist Diego Rivera.

The Mexican artist, who faithfully painted self-portraits throughout the course of her life, has become not only one the most famous artists in the world, but is very often the only Latin American women artist most people know by name. The invisibility of her comrades can be attributed to the power structures within the art world that disregarded the major contributions that women from 20 countries have been making to the art world throughout the twentieth century.

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985, a new exhibition on view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, is a major step towards setting the record straight with more than 260 works by 116 women artists now on view through December 31, 2017. Curated by Dr. Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Dr. Andrea Giunta, Radical Women is a watershed moment in the art world, illustrating the power of intersectionality in the new millennium.

Six years in the making, Radical Women brings together women from across Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the United States, showcasing the works of pioneers making art on their own terms, including Brazilian art star Lygia Pape, who had a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this year; visionary Venezuelan Pop artist Marisol, who died at the age of 83 in 2016; and the gender-bending self-portraiture of Cuban American performance artist Ana Mendieta, whose husband was found not guilty of her murder in 1985.

The exhibition, which is accompanied by a catalogue of the same name, published by Prestel, is a brilliant introduction to both the artists and the issues they face as women in the Latin American diaspora, providing their own take on feminism, patriarchy, gender, sexuality, identity, and art history. We spotlight six artists you should know, who have inherited the mantle from the indomitable Frida Kahlo.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: “Marcha gay (Gay pride march)”, 1984. Gelatin silver print. 11 × 14 in. (27.9 × 35.6 cm) Courtesy of Yolanda Andrade.

Photo: Paz Errázuriz (Chilean, b. 1944), La Palmera, from the series La manzana de Adán (Adam’s Apple), 1987. Digital archival pigment print on Canson platinum paper. 19 5/8 × 23 1/2 in. (49.8 × 59.7 cm)Courtesy of the artist and Galeria AFA, Santiago. Artwork © the artist.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Dazed, Exhibitions, Latin America, Photography, Women

Dasha Yastrebova: Welcome to the Moscow Underground

Posted on September 28, 2017

Photo: Dasha Yastrebova, Dancers in costume, 2007. Courtesy the artist

Photo: Dasha Yastrebova, Masha Galaxy, trash-character and performer, the star of all parties, and a legend in Moscow, 2007. Courtesy the artist

In 2007, when the Solyanka Club opened in Moscow, it was a time of great hope. The first generation of post-Soviet teenagers came of age in a moment when anything seemed possible, mostly because the government was willing to overlook many social and cultural activities. Solyanka, a restaurant during the day and a nightclub after dark, burst forth. It quickly became the home for an underground, bohemian community of artists, photographers, designers, musicians, performers, and filmmakers who embraced those whom the Russian government persecuted, specifically queer culture, drag queens, and people who identified as transgender. Even then, Solyanka was an island of tolerance in a country plagued by prejudice and persecution.

At the age of eighteen, while shooting for magazines like Russian Vogue, Dasha Yastrebova started going to Solyanka. She photographed there for a year, and most of this work has never been seen before. Here, Yastrebova speaks about this intriguing moment in Russian history, a period of personal and creative freedom that has since disappeared.

Read the Full Story at Aperture Online

Photo: Dasha Yastrebova, Stylist Natasha Sych, 2007. Courtesy the artist.

Categories: Aperture, Art, Photography